After Woolwich

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Terrorism is not an act but a process. It starts with a plan that may or may not be followed by a successful atrocity. Then comes the terror. On Wednesday, Drummer Lee Rigby of the 2nd Battalion the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, was murdered on a Woolwich street. His killers committed a gruesome and bloodthirsty act and left a two-year-old boy without a father. But they did not change the world.

In 2001, al-Qaeda’s assault on the World Trade Centre in New York and on the Pentagon in Washington might have done so, abruptly confronting the Western world with a